Winter 2013 Episode Rankings – Week 4

Slightly delayed, as I spent a long weekend at a friend’s house. I had hoped to post this early instead, before I left, but not everything was subbed in time. And so I returned to it this morning, only to find that I couldn’t remember what happened in half of the episodes… I guess I should be glad that was the only side-effect of four days without anime, any longer and I’d have been permanently scarred! Anyhow, having skimmed through everything to refresh my memory, I’m confident in my rankings. 😛

I had talked about stalling a series at the three/four episode mark and picking up one of the many other Winter offerings I skipped over, but I’m delaying that until at least next week – I’m already behind on Week 5’s episodes, and don’t want to add more to the backlog!

The only major jump in the rankings was for Minami-ke Tadaima, largely due to the appearance of Hosaka-sempai. Everything this character says and does is comedy gold. He should have his own series. Constantly undressing while internally monologuing, and creeping people out with his weird (but always good) intentions… definitely want more of him in the coming episodes, please!

It may have been a smaller increase, but Little Busters! finally worked its way out of the red zone! Again, this may have a lot to do with the change of focus towards one specific character, Saigusa Haruka. I stupidly thought they were done with her back in episode 7, and that she’d just be a side character from then on, but am glad to know there’s more to her story than that. Who’d have thought the evil Disciplinary Committee would be related to her though!? I mean, their hair styles are so different! 😛

Moving down:

Cuticle Tantei Inaba stayed at the top longer than I expected it would; the animation isn’t the best, the premise is stupid, and it reuses the same gags. And yet, it is still hilariously funny! It remains the first (non-sequel) thing I’d recommend to people from the winter season, and judging by the woefully low view count and rating it has received on Anime-Planet, it needs all the recommendations it can get!

General comments:

The bottom four series (Ixion Saga DT, Sasami-san@Ganbaranai, Mondaiji-tachi… and Maoyuu Maou Yuusha) showed no change from last week, with the latter two in particular showing no signs that they’ll improve any time soon. At the other end, Psycho-Pass became the first series to hold onto first place for two consecutive weeks, while Chihayafuru 2 took 4th place for a third time.

I feel I should comment on Magi, just because I haven’t over the past three weeks, and a lot has happened during that time! You’d think overthrowing a corrupt monarchy through a course of epic battles and inspiring speeches, only for an even bigger threat to appear just when you think it’s all over would be enough to shake up the rankings a bit… apparently not, as Magi continues to wobble around the middle of the table. Its simple shounen formula loses out to shows with deeper plotlines and/or pure comedy.